Tuesday, June 28, 2005

The Replacements

The past two weeks have been interesting. Since I last posted I have been to the beach and back. I have also been dealing with replacements.

For me, replacements are new items that have no new benefits or features. They are just substitutes for objects that no longer work. They add nothing. They only fix the status quo and make you pay for being able to do the same things as you could before. Here is a list of my recent replacements.

Clothes Iron - The old one could only take so many falls from atop its ironing board perch. It started to leak water constantly, even in the upright position. We got a new one.

Water Heater - I came back from the beach and turned the temperature on the old water heater from “vacation” back up to “warm.” It started hissing at me and proceeded to dump 15 gallons of water all over the floor. We got a new one.

Fuel Pump in the Corsica - There has been some controversy about this one. There is a chance that the car ran out of gas and ruined the old fuel pump. There is also a chance that the pump went on its own (the car has almost 82k miles on it). I'm going with the natural causes, even if it is just to make me feel better. Regardless of the blame, we got a new one.

You see? I have no more benefits than I did before. My ironing, showering, and driving are the same. The money is gone, but I really have nothing to show for it.

As if that wasn't enough replacing for two weeks' time, the story gets better. When we came upstairs from mopping up after the old water heater, we started sifting through our vacation backlog of mail. One of the letters was from DSW. It shared with us the following information:

"As you may have read or seen in local or national media reports, DSW was the victim of a significant theft of customer data....we have now verified that your credit card was among the customer information that was stolen."
Don't tell me - I need to get a replacement credit card. Sure, why not. I just wish that all of the replacements were as sorry for their respective inconveniences as DSW claims to be.

Yours truly got stung on the DSW theft as well. I resolved not to do business again with a company that did not protect my information properly...until last week, when I spotted a fabulous pair of strappy shoes...